From Hell's Heart
by bluekrishna
Summary: Hunting down his old crew, Javik realizes the true horror of the Reapers and what they have done for millennia.
1. Chapter 1

It had all been for nothing.

All the small victories, the gains bought with the precious blood of those few that remained. For one shining moment, he'd dared dream that they could push back the invasion. That his strategies of unpredictable, but decisive strikes and scorched earth withdrawals mixed liberally with toe to toe battles of attrition where the enemy was least prepared had finally confounded these so called 'machine gods'. Guerrilla warfare had put a stopper in their 'inexorable' advance.

And then, in one fell swoop, all hope had been dashed, shattered like so much glass carelessly dropped on the unforgiving ground. The spearhead of their assault on the occupied Citadel, a destroyer named the _Ardent Fury_, had fallen into a devious snare of the enemy's design. It had been a trap all along. One he had lead his ship foolishly into, thinking for once that they'd had the upper hand. His ship and all of his men, taken. He would have been captured as well if it hadn't been for the devotion, and insubordination, of his most trusted lieutenant, Karsa.

He recalled the sting of a hypo, sedatives coursing through his veins, then someone shoved him into an escape pod. He had blearily watched his ship diminish into the distance before slipping away into a drugged haze. His last rational thought then had _damned_ Karsa for tricking him into abandoning them at the end.

But it hadn't been the end. It would have been so much better, so much more merciful had that been the final fate of those comrades who'd given him so much of themselves, striven beside him to beat this monster that had crested the waves to swallow them all. But there had been no mercy, and the Reapers had done as they'd always done, reap. His men, their harvest.

Javik pushed back the pain of remembering as he squatted in the mud of this primitive planet. He was waiting for them, the ones who'd fallen to the enemy's influence, the ones who still pretended at life, who mocked his friends by wearing their faces. How he hated the Reapers.

He tasted blood as he unsheathed his knife and spat into the muck at his side. The claylike substance coated him from head to toe, it had even found its way inside his armor and gloves. He imagined a sea of it inside his boots and grimaced in revulsion.

There were only two left. They were out there somewhere, hunting him even as he hunted them. Engagement after engagement, battle after battle and he'd slowly whittled their numbers down to just these two, just Karsa and Rimbol. He bared his teeth at the irony of having to kill the one man he had trusted above all others, who had spared him the fate that had befallen the rest: Indoctrination.

He took some soot from his dead campfire and smeared it over his blade, concealing its shine in the black ash. And this is what he'd been reduced to, _him, _Commander Javik, the Scourge of Creytonia, the Butcher of East Paxl. Hiding in a mudhole, not a single decent weapon but this primitive knife, foraging and hunting for his food, how distastefully..._barbaric. _He felt utterly debased, brought low by his own monumental hubris.

Whatever else they'd done to Karsa, they'd let him retain his cunning. Javik's lip curled as he spotted a glowing pair of eyes in the fog, their unnatural blue radiance telling him that it was definitely an enemy. And that it was probably Rimbol. That meant Karsa was probably close by, waiting for Javik to take the bait before revealing himself. A month ago, he might have done it, might have rushed headlong into the fight, brash and arrogant. His fiery temperament had been a boon in the war against the Reapers, who were unable to adapt to unconventional strategies. He'd won enough encounters to become a thorn in the enemy's side.

He supposed he should take it as a compliment that the Reapers had had to take over the minds and bodies of the ones who knew him best in order to defeat him. And defeat him they had, in fight after fight, using every trick they'd learned from him. He'd made them pay dearly for each victory, but every loss had chipped away at the bonfire of rage and indignation in him until all that remained was despair and bitterness. And it had prevailed in each fight where righteous fury had not.

He seethed as he watched Rimbol approach his hiding place. Half buried in the cold mud, he knew his heat signature was obscured on their instruments. He kept two eyes on Rimbol and let the other two roam, trying to spy that other traitor. His guts churned at the word, knowing that it wasn't the whole truth, but it was a convenient lie. One that let him go through with this...murder. One at a time, he'd slaughtered his friends.

He must have made some noise, because that corrupted version of his gunnery officer swung its massive head round and seemed to look straight at the prothean. Javik stilled, tense and ready. His knife he held at a low angle, his mind already feeding him information about the man's racial vulnerabilities. Unlike Karsa, Rimbol was Prothean only in name, his people were descended from one of the many subjugated races. _Three inches behind auricle, cranial weakspot. Just left of sternum, arterial junction. Base of throat, supernal diaphragm.__  
_

The inner catalogue of strike points was cut off as a rumble of rockfall to the north drew his quarry's attention. That's when Javik finally spotted the other one, up on the ridge, peering down into the canyon through its scope. He reinforced the thought, _It. That is not Karsa any more. It is an imitation only._

The silhouetted shape moved on, shadowing Rimbol. Javik stalked in their wake to see if an opportunity arose to take out the one without the other knowing. Probably impossible if they were communing on a level below his awareness, but he thought perhaps something could be gained with more observation. Patience was a thing he'd learned from calamitous and recurring failure.

They were searching haphazardly, without any real pattern. Or at least it seemed so to him as he waded through the swamp after them. He observed them stopping and starting in perfect sync, there was clearly some kind of unspoken communication going on between the two. It was uncanny and boded ill for any plans he might have for separating the pair. No matter, his strategies had always been...fluid.

He saw for a second the glitter of four eyes on the ravine's rim and froze, holding his breath. Javik resisted the urge to duck and run. He was damned if he was going to let himself be flushed from cover like a prey animal. With relief, he saw the scrutiny pass over him and stuck to places shielded by outcroppings from above.

This canyon was opening up onto the floodplains, where there was precious little cover. Whatever he thought to do, he better do it quick. His advantages: He'd seen them first. He knew that they thought they knew what he would do and lastly, he knew the terrain, he'd had half a day of recon before they'd arrived, tracing the signal he'd intentionally leaked to one of their scouters. Javid had known full well who the Reapers would send after his crippled and depleted ship. So he'd prepared as best he could, though he didn't even have a proper weapon any more and no ordnance, rations, and barely any survival gear at all.

He had to draw them back into the narrow straits where the sheer rock walls would keep Karsa from interrupting his skirmish with Rimbol with troublesome rifle fire. He crouched beneath a generous overhang. Javik picked up a hand sized stone among those littering the ground at his feet and, letting his biotics flare, gave it a good heave toward the hulking shape of Rimbol in the twilit delta past the rock walls. It collided with that thing's head, sending him end over end. Rimbol scrambled to his feet with a bellow of rage. Scrabbling from up top told Javik that Karsa had been alerted.

Javik grinned a savage grin and bolted back into the ravine, knowing that Rimbol, if there was any part of Rimbol left in that monstrosity, had never been able to resist chasing something that was running away. It was a primitive instinct that Javik and many others in the crew had teased the tall alien relentlessly for. True to form, the squelching patter of feet running in mud behind him heralded the man's charge. Javik put on a burst of speed, dodging to the side to avoid gunfire from above.

He took a chance and glanced behind to see what Rimbol was armed with. Javik's teeth flashed in a smirk. A shotgun, well, he intended to stay well out of the effective range of that little toy. His heart pounded as he dodged and wove through half sunken trees and boulders. He got to a place that was so narrow that he could touch both walls with arms outstretched if he so chose and scrambled partway up the wall at a bend with a pinch point. He stole a look up and saw that his view of the sky was virtually nonexistent. Good, that meant that anyone standing on the edge couldn't see in either.

Below him, Rimbol had slowed his headlong sprint to a lope and just as he passed, Javik leapt out, silently snarling as he collided with the towering man, wrapping his legs around the thing's waist. Rimbol stumbled under his weight. In that moment of confusion, Javik ripped his sidearm away, throwing it with all his might in a random direction. It struck a rock wall, sparking as it broke into fragments, but Javik had no time to lament the loss of a potential weapon as Rimbol's huge hands found their way to his throat and squeezed.

His four eyes narrowed to slits as he struggled for air, glaring hatefully at the ruin of a man he was contending with. Rimbol's jutting horns, the ones he'd been so proud of, had been torn away at the root. In many places all over the beast's body where the skin had been peeled back, Javik could see cybernetics blinking away in their depths. Tubes ran in and out of Rimbol's viscera and Javik could see by the torn fabric around each intrusion that it had been no clean, clinical surgery that had put them there.

Sounds came out of Rimbol's widely gaping mouth, unintelligible moans that scraped across his nerves, making that hot anger he'd held so tightly bound rise hard and fast. His knife came up and plunged into Rimbol's wrists and he began to saw at the tendons. Those fingers finally loosened their vise like grip. Javik shifted his weight to wrench them both to the ground, using the momentum to spin them so he ended up behind Rimbol in a rear choke.

The creature thrashed in the mud, trying to dislodge him and, though his arms threatened to dislocate from their sockets and he nearly dropped his knife more than once, he hung on and with a short barking cry, slashed Rimbol's throat open all the way down to the spine. The blade skipped along the vertebrae, the jarring vibration of it crawling up his forearm. A short deluge of rank, black blood sprayed into his face and his armor's wide collar. He nearly retched in disgust, dry heaving as he pushed the corpse off and away from him.

A low sound grabbed his attention and he had just enough time to spare a thought for Karsa before he was grabbed up in a biotic lift. He grimaced, trying to quell panic as he rose out of the ravine. He cleared the foliage in time to see the end of a sniper rifle come swinging around to target him. In desperation, he did the only thing he could think of and threw his own lift. On himself. He wasn't even sure it would work, but a millisecond later he sent a prayer of thanks into the ether as his body rocketed to the side, confounding Karsa's shot.

The rock wall rose up to meet him as he spun lengthwise in the air and he lunged out frantically and barely caught its edge. Air rushed out from between clenched teeth as stone crashed into already bruised ribs. The sharp crack of a rifle sounded again and pain blossomed in his shoulder, nearly making him lose his grip. With a harsh shout, he pulled himself up over the rim and stood, facing his opponent across the gap, eyes darting for a place to hide behind. There, a small boulder. Javik threw a dark channel to disrupt Karsa's aim and bolted for the rock. He rolled the last few feet to dodge the rounds that peppered the ground at his heels.

He peeked around the obstruction and saw that Karsa was readying himself for a leap across the gap. Good, that only brought his enemy closer, within melee range. He tightened his grip on the knife as the thud of feet announced Karsa's arrival on his side of the ravine. He heard footsteps pad cautiously closer and decided on a course of action.

Javik straightened, moving out of cover. He locked gazes with his oldest and dearest friend, now only a shell of his former self. A puppet to those fiendish machines that plagued the galaxy. He bellowed a challenge, "Karsa!"

The thing tilted its head at him and lifted that weapon to end him with one loud, cacophonous report. But Javik knew that its effectiveness was halved, no quartered at short range and darted forward in a serpentine dash. He closed the distance and grabbed the barrel, pushing it away just as it fired. Agony lanced through his hand as it was burnt by the incredible heat that surged through the metal. The air next to his head was split by the round as it tore by, making his ears ring, leaving him dizzy.

Still holding onto the gun, he pivoted on one foot and lashed out with the other, planting his heel in Karsa's stomach. He tore the thing's grip away from the rifle's stock with a mighty yank. Karsa rolled backward from the force of the kick and came up armed with a knife of its own. Those four eyes that held blue fire pierced him then and he hesitated. Bad call, he caught a swipe right along his cheekbone inches from his eyes for the mistake and with an angry shout, tossed the rifle away, determination cutting through his sentimental weakness.

He circled left as it circled right and stayed in a ready crouch. Javik winced, favoring his injured shoulder. An unearthly voice drifted to him from the figure before him, "Your downfall is inevitable. There is no hope. Join us."

Enraged beyond words, he launched himself at the thing with a scream. With a lightning quick barrage, he forced it back, his blade ringing sharply against that other's as it parried almost every strike with preternatural speed. The ones that did breach its defenses to rip flesh and circuitry did very little to slow it down or keep it from riposting with skill. Soon his armor was striped with his own blood. Javik breathed heavily, the weight of it all started to slow him down, the wounds, the_ weariness_.

He was tired, just so damn tired, but any traitorous thought he might have had about giving in and letting oblivion take him was staved off every time he caught a glimpse of that face. That face that had laughed with him on the barricades, argued strategy with him over the maps, had given him so much excellent insight and advice over the years. Karsa had deserved so much better than this.

How dare they? How DARE they destroy this brilliant soldier? What right did they have to do this? Who made them believe they had ANY RIGHT? Dimly, he was aware that he was shouting all this out loud, roaring it. His voice came back to him from the rocks, distorted echoes in the dark, japing at him in his own skewed subharmonics. His blood roared in his ears as he tapped that last reserve of cold fury that had sustained him through this slaughter. His veins were on fire as he leapt and danced, the knife an extension of his arm. Javik ignored the wounds that appeared in his flesh and putting aside any niggling doubts that this was the right thing to do, destroy the last vestige of his noble crew. It was the only thing to do, the only course left him.

Karsa rose to the challenge, strike for strike, as puissant as he'd ever been in true life, Javik's match in this as he'd always been. Maybe more so now that he'd been rewired for faster reflexes by the machines in his body. Javik became aware that he'd stopped using the detached 'it' just as the thing that wore his friend's countenance swept both legs out from under him in a low spinning kick. Javik landed on his back with a soft 'oof', his knife skittering off into the bushes and he tried to scramble away, but a boot came down hard on his chest, pinning him to the hard packed dirt.

Sneering in defiance, he glared up at Karsa and prepared for death...or worse. There was a long moment of stillness in that place as the adversaries stared at each other in silence. Javik snapped, "Well, what are you waiting for? Finish me, monster!"

There was a strange flicker in those lambent eyes for just a second and then Karsa reared back with the blade in his hand to do just that. Javik's hands searched for something, anything to distract that creature. His gloved hands closed on something around his neck. He tore it free, flinging it up into Karsa's face, thinking that he needed just a moment of imbalance to turn the situation around.

With unnatural swiftness, one of the Karsa's hands shot out and grasped the object flying toward his face and there was a flash of green light. Javik saw an expression of honest confusion run a course over that defiled prothean face and the monster stilled, his mouth dropping open in frank astonishment. Always one to take advantage, Javik heaved Karsa off him. He lunged to his feet as the man fell away, disarming him on the way with a quick twist of the wrist.

In a blur, Javik bowled the frozen thing over and straddled him, arm pumping as he stuck the blade in to the hilt repeatedly. The roaring fog in his head nearly blocked out the strange pained cries of limp Karsa below him. When reason reasserted itself, Javik saw what he'd thrown at his enemy, still clutched in that hand tightly. The Echo Shard, now it was his turn to be astonished as his gaze swung back to Karsa's face. What he saw nearly had him leaping back in utter shock.

Awareness, and a bone deep terror flared in those eyes. He felt his own face go slack, mirroring the dawning of those same horrible epiphanies. His friend's mouth opened. Javik jumped at the sound of Karsa's voice. It was his alone, weak and thready, "...Javik...?"

Blood leaked from Karsa's mouth, coating his teeth and lips in gruesome fashion. Javik trembled as a feeling rose up in him, something huge and terrifying, just on the edge of comprehension, something that threatened his very sanity. His breath became rapid and ragged as he focused solely on trying not to see the friend who lay under him, veritably perforated by his rabid and crazed attack. Vital fluids leaked from dozens of stab wounds, surely he couldn't last for long.

"...J-Javik, I am, there are...voices...What has happened...to me?" Heartbreaking, his heart was breaking and he blinked once, slowly, trying to push the past away before it broke him completely with bottomless want for earlier times, better times. His throat threatened to close in terrible remorse.

"You have been...indoctrinated, Karsa." He said, gently. He knew he should do it, he should end the man's suffering and his knife hand kept jerking where it lay against the jugular. He closed his eyes and tried to force his hand to move, to finish the deed. He silently screamed at the universe for delivering unto him this final and most cruel unkindness.

A hand closed over his and his eyes shot open to see tears, actual tears on that ruined face. Protheans did not weep, only the very young were allowed the luxury of tears. And why not? If there was ever a time to weep, it was now. It pulled an answering grief from his very depths, yet there was no outlet for the sorrow, not a trace of wetness on his own cheeks. Karsa tugged on his hand, not to beg for quarter, but to beg for relief.

Javik quailed, a cowardly part of him saying, tempting with a thought, _Wait, wait for the monster to re-emerge. Then kill it_. Karsa shook his head as though reading his mind and fought for breath, saying in wet, choked tones, "Do it...do...it now...while I am still...me."

With a hitching breath of anguish, he steeled himself and heard just as the knife began its deadly arc, a low whispered, "...brother..."

Javik did not know if it was him or Karsa who'd said it, only knew the hollow yearning it had sparked in the yawningly empty pit at the heart of him. That single word unveiling a thing never spoken of, but known.

He stayed like that for a long while, not a single thought in his head that manifested in any way coherently. Finally, when something did arise past the numbness, he had to search for the word for it as the feeling swept through him like a foul wind, along with the terrible realization of what it truly meant.

Horror.

Pure abject horror. Not at what the Reapers had done to his crew, his comrades, but at what they'd made of him. The true horror of what the Reapers were doing settled over him like a cloak of nettles. They changed even the ones who escaped, no one had been left unscathed, unaltered by the advent of the Reaper invasion. This is what they'd all been made into. Hollow people.

His own race changed irrevocably, to the point that blood ties like the one he shared with Karsa went unacknowledged in case it became a weapon in the enemy's hand. Cold, uncaring, callous, had they always been so? Or only since the invasion began had they truly become so utterly ruthless? Subconsciously, had he tried to reverse that terrible detachment when he'd brought his people together in the first place?

Yes. He knew that now, every decision to show mercy or gain cooperation by compromise slammed home with bone shaking force. He'd loved his men, beyond reason, he'd made them a part of him, they'd done miracles together, small but no less miraculous for their ultimate futility. He'd turned what others had labeled weakness into strength and been greater for it.

The Reapers had made him murder the very best parts of him.

As they'd done to everyone. What they did not take, they subverted and spoiled past all hope of redemption. The scale of it, the horrifying _enormity_ of it. His guts churned and had he any food left in his stomach, it would no doubt have found its way out onto the clay of this desolate backwater planet. How many times had this happened over the cycles? How many times would it keep on happening?

For he had no illusions now that the Prothean Empire would fall. The Reapers had done their work well. There was no heart left in it, the Empire was as cold and bloodless as the Reapers could have ever hoped for. Fitting progeny, indeed. He doubted even the fabled Crucible could save them now, let alone those pathetic hibernation projects on the move out there. A last ditch effort that begged skepticism from even those who'd dreamt it up.

Without hope for victory, without a chance of survival, what was left for him? What use was it to even try?

But...

There was still this..._offense_, they had committed, as woefully inadequate a word as that was. This obscenity they'd visited on him, on every cycle. And it rankled deeply, a venom that made his blood boil. _Here_ was a spark of fire deep in the soul of him and he blew on it gently to fan it into an inferno of vindictive wrath. Because without it, he had nothing, _was _nothing. He _burned_ there, fiercely, though on the outside he was still just a man straddling the brother he'd murdered out of mercy, shoulders slumped in devastation.

Slowly, his lips peeled back from sharp teeth in a gaping wound of a smile that was more like a silent scream and had no small portion of madness in it. Javik shuddered violently as it crystallized in his mind, the final verdict. His hand drifted down his brother's arm and found the Echo Shard. He felt the hum of it even through the gloves. Tucking it safely away, Javik dropped his chin to his chest and let his eyelids lower over stinging eyes.

He whispered one word, a word that reverberated through his being as though he'd shouted it at the top of his lungs. A word that summed up the only reason he had left to live, the sole purpose of his existence from this point forward. No quarter given, no cost too great, no means too deplorable, he'd commit atrocity after atrocity to see it done. Gladly.

His tongue moved the word past his teeth, past his lips, dropping it on the skin of the world like a gift. His gift.

"Vengeance."

* * *

A/N: A slice of Javik's life. A little fieldtrip into the distant past. The story name? Well, who doesn't like a Moby Dick reference? And Javik is sooooo Ahab. (Ahab-y?, Ahab-esque? Ahab-ian? Ah, I just looked it up. It's 'Ahabian') Hope you enjoyed it. It was fun to write and I hope it's a worthy entry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Years, millenia later:**

He picked up the glowing, spinning memory of a bygone age. He handled it with caution not because it was fragile, but because of what it might do to him. He was the fragile one here. Even gloved, he felt it humming at him in encouragement, as though it sensed his presence.

Would he give in and touch it bare handed? Should he? Javik couldn't deny that the temptation existed. What wonders must be on the Echo Shard. Memories of his people at their highest, the pinnacle of their civilization, all their accomplishments and victories encoded in its pheromone matrices.

Things that would humble the people of this age. These primitives that rose to eclipse the prothean empire; they sometimes seemed like children to him, fumbling in the dark, unaware of how crude and simple their little societies were. He'd laughed the first time he'd seen an omnitool. Liara spent the good part of an hour teaching him how to use it. He likened it to being taught how to make fire by cave dwellers. Though he hadn't seen the point of it, he'd indulged her.

In fact, he'd been doing quite a bit of indulging lately. These primitives in whose company he'd found himself, he felt a...familiarity about them. The way they talked to one another, their easy comaraderie _pulled_ at him. Throughout the decks and the walls of the Normandy, he could feel it, like the ship was a big, throbbing living entity and all these people; its nervous system. Interconnected so thoroughly that it was often hard for him to distinguish them from each other from feel alone. One big synergistic soup of lives. All striving, all reaching in tandem, all hoping beyond hope that this endeavor be not in vain.

Anguish rose in him. How like his own war against the Reapers. He saw more of himself and his dead crew in the people around him than he truly wanted to. He hated to admit it, but he feared for them. With all that was left of the old him, he feared the day it all came crashing down for Shepard and her men. For he knew it would destroy her as it had him. Then all would truly be lost.

This cycle...he remembered how infuriating it had been to wake up to find himself surrounded by primitives. He'd almost climbed right back into the stasis pod to wait it out for another fifty thousand years, certain they'd had no chance against the coming apocalypse. Something in her eyes, and in the _feel_ of her memories, swayed him, made him pause. Her determination, echoed in those who'd been with her, the turian who angled his body toward her, the asari whose eyes shone at him with such fervor...

Shepard's determination was as adamant and immovable as a mountain. Thus, _he'd_ been moved.

Yes, there were redeeming qualities to this cycle. His inner cynic warned him against getting too attached, that one brush with madness was enough. But then, against reason, he started to find himself...caring. Caring whether a frag grenade ended these new comrades on the field. He went out of his way to watch their backs, and not just that. He'd been shocked to feel guilt at the look in Liara's eyes when he'd challenged her faith after Thessia fell.

In exasperation, Javik scrubbed his face with his hand. He looked once more at the Echo Shard in his hand. It appeared to stare back, daring him to come see. It seemed to whisper,_ Remember what it is to be prothean. Be hard, callous, cruel. Regain some perspective._

But was that really what he wanted? Could he be that any more? Who would he be that for? The Empire was dust. And what's more, he found himself thinking about what might be at the tail end of those memories. Every prothean who ever touched it shared with it their memories, uploaded through the pheromones they emitted through their pores.

A trembling struck him as he thought, _What had Karsa felt at the end? Betrayal? Despair? Can I live with knowing that my brother blamed me for not saving them, or hated me in his final moments? Can I live with **not** knowing?_

Did he dare find out? Javik took the tip of the glove of his left hand between his teeth and pulled his hand free of its protective sheath. He set the glove in his lap and reached for the shard, stopping just short of it. His fingertips were awash in a tingling and tendrils of thoughts not his tickled his outermost senses. Javik debated in agony for ages, torn between flinging the thing and its dead memories away and gripping it so tight that it cut into his skin. Maybe it would let out some of the pain that lived in deep, stagnant pools at the core of him.

_Karsa, what do I do? If there is a single kind deity left in the universe, give me strength. _And just as though the thought had summoned the man, he saw flashes of scenes achingly familiar to him. Yet not. The perspective was odd and it took him a moment to realize that he saw himself. Through Karsa's eyes. He hadn't even touched the thing yet and it sent him pieces of that which he dreaded most. However, Javik couldn't pull himself away, even as the dead man's memories unspooled behind his closed eyes.

_Flushed with pride, Karsa followed. Into the breach, into hundreds of breaches, he followed. For Javik was different. Javik trusted Karsa to not plant a knife in his back, as so many other prothean soldiers might to ascend in rank. That they were of the same brood mattered not. Karsa himself once killed another brother who sought to assassinate Javik for just that reason._

_ Shame still touched him for that act, no matter that it had been necessary. He'd never told Javik of the dagger that almost killed him one night, or who wielded it. He dared not, he swore to himself to protect Javik as much as he could, even from seeing their people as they truly were. _

_Because when he looked at his brother, he saw hope. Hope; the rarest commodity in the universe. Karsa was humbled that Javik gave it so selflessly, and felt joy to be a part of the thing Javik was trying to do._

_Then the Ardent Fury fell to the enemy and Karsa watched with deepening despair as the ship was boarded. Monstrosities filled the corridors, capturing or killing all the men and women therein. _

_Javik, the stubborn ass, protested when Karsa suggested he flee. Karsa expected this and plunged the hypo filled with sleeping draught into that unsuspecting back. Shame flooded him, as his brother turned a look of utter betrayal on him. _

_Karsa almost crumpled in the face of it and caught Javik as he tumbled to the deck. Dragging him to an escape pod, Karsa found himself whispering over and over into the semiconscious man's aural canals, "Forgive me. I am sorry."_

_Karsa shoved Javik into the waiting hatch and shut it. He pressed the launch sequence and watched as the pod rocketed out, programmed to seek out the closest outpost. He leaned on the port, eyes glued to that dot that grew ever smaller, the vast sense of betrayal in him leaving a foul taste in his mouth. He shook it off, saying to himself, "Hope must live."_

_He turned back to the situation in the ship and set his jaw in determination. It was a good day to die._

_But death had not found him. Or the others. A thousand torments later, as his will was being subsumed by the Reapers, he finally saw what they planned to make of him and screamed in horror. Connected as they all were now, the ones Javik loved, bent and broken, remade into soulless assassins, all screaming in unison, 'No!"_

_Karsa's consciousness dimmed to a flicker, but still somewhat aware of what his hands did; the terrible things the Reapers made him do. And over it all, the command to kill their former commander shrieking at the forefront. No way to hide from it, no way to keep the machine that held him in thrall from poking around in his memories for tactics and advantages. The tiny piece of him that was all that remained watched, helpless as they chased Javik across the traverse, from one defeat to another._

_A flare of green light and suddenly Karsa felt his will surge to the fore. He tasted awareness, and freedom. Dumbstruck, he beheld wonders and triumphs, all flooding into his brain from the innocuously small thing in his hand. It almost, but didn't quite, shut out the agony of the knife plunging in and out of his desecrated flesh. Karsa came to himself and looked upon Javik's face, twisted in a savage snarl. Javik's eyes flicked from the thing in Karsa's hand to his face and widened in horror._

_"...Javik..." That was no good, he could barely hear himself over the murmurings of the foreign presence squatting in his mind. Karsa swallowed and tried again, "...J-Javik, I am, there are...voices...What has happened...to me?"_

_"You have been...indoctrinated, Karsa." Javik said, gently. _

_Even after this, that Javik could still be gentle, made Karsa's throat tighten and to his shame, he felt tears gather in his eyes. It was a thing only the weak did, but now as he saw how much Javik hurt, how torn his brother was, he felt wetness slide from his eyes and into the dirt beneath him. Karsa lifted a hand and tugged on Javik's wrist._

_Javik's eyes popped open above him and Karsa saw sorrow, deep and unending in those four eyes. Yet Javik, ever stronger than he, did not weep. He could only hope that Javik had the strength to do what came next. Karsa whispered, in broken, hushed tones, "Do it...do...it now...while I am still...me."_

_Cruel to beg mercy now, for he'd betrayed Javik more than once. It may not have been his will, but it had been his body and mind that had been remade into a monster to contend with Javik. _

_Fierce gladness filled him as he watched the knife's edge glitter in its deadly arc. That he be ended before losing himself again. That his brother, so drained of mercy, could still give it to one like him. He heard, just before pain took his senses away, Javik say, "...Brother.."_

_Tears flooded out of his eyes even as his life's blood pumped from his sundered jugular onto the dirt. It was far more than he deserved, the forgiveness implicit in Javik's voice. Love; long kept banked in their cold and indifferent age, love filled him as life fled. Karsa greeted the darkness that followed as a friend. He felt remorse that he wouldn't be there to see the Reapers cast down at last. _

_Hope lived._

Javik came to himself with a choked cry. With one shaking hand, he reached up to his cheek. He pulled his fingers away and stared at them in wonder. They were wet, he was weeping. A dam had burst in him sometime during the painful recollections. And he couldn't seem to make it stop. He wasn't even sure if he wanted it to stop. In his mind, he felt things moving, colliding, bursting, _changing._ What was happening to him?

In the end, he wept for them, all the lost ones. And for himself too, for not being strong enough. He begged of them forgiveness, wherever they were. Forgiveness for turning down such a dark path, for all the things he'd done in the name of vengeance. He'd betrayed the ones who sacrificed all for him by killing his own heart. Hope; the hope that he used to represent, was dead.

It shamed him that Karsa, who died in such agony and dishonor, could love at the end, could be glad for an ending at Javik's hands. He couldn't bear it. The pain of that loss, those many losses, burned anew. Javik stumbled to his feet and headed toward his basin at a near run. He plunged his hands elbow deep into the trough and scrubbed at his hands, raking his nails over his skin until his flesh burned. But none of it erased the guilt. Tears rained from his chin into the basin.

So lost was he in his thoughts that he never heard the door open. He started violently as a hand landed on his shoulder. Cursing himself for a sniveling weakling, he splashed his face with water before turning. Shepard, of course it was Shepard. She was the only one who bothered him in his solitude. Well, she and Liara. He turned his thoughts away from the troublesome, if intriguing asari and focused on the here and now.

He drew about himself a tattered semblance of imperious diffidence and said, "What do you want, human?"

A strange flickering in her green eyes made him wonder how much she'd seen. What she might be seeing in his face now. At least the damn tears seemed to have halted.

Shepard smiled and said, "We're almost at Earth. Just thought I'd get everyone's last thoughts."

"Last thoughts?" Javik snorted, with a sneer, "You make it sound as though we will all die."

She leaned against the basin and echoed his snort, "Why? Do you think we won't?"

Her lilting tone accused him of optimism. He felt a tiny shard of amusement at the sudden reversal of their usual juxtaposition.

Javik looked at her askance, pausing for a long while before answering, "There is a great chance that we will fail. We wouldn't be the first."

"No, we weren't." The way her eyes became hooded and flicked away from him made him wonder why she'd spare his feelings. His people were lost, forever. She knew it as well as he. How it galled him that his eyes began to prickle once more.

Shepard sighed and said, "It will be the end. One way or another. At least, we'll have tried."

"If we try and fail, we still fail." He winced at the harshness of his own words. Old habits were so very hard to break. She didn't deserve his rancor.

"Even if we fail, you don't think the trying was worth it in and of itself?" she said, brows lifting.

"There were times I didn't think you tried enough. Certain decisions you found too...distasteful to make."

"Victory, at any cost, is that it?" There was a note of some kind in her tone that he couldn't quite decipher, almost disappointment.

"At any cost." Even as he said it, Javik felt a quiver of unease roll through him.

"The end justifies the means?" She rubbed her chin as she contemplated him. Again, he wondered what she saw.

Javik wanted to let the automatic response fly out of his mouth at her, _Of course the end justifies the means!_ But even as he thought it, in the face of having touched Karsa's memories, he knew it for a lie.

All the things he'd done before the final destruction of his people, his empire, did nothing to halt the enemy's advance but tarnish his soul black. He remembered slaughtering thousands, burning whole planets, leaving refugees to die so the greater part of his military strength could be spent elsewhere. Shame touched him as he found himself glad Karsa and the rest died before they'd seen what he'd become.

His mouth opened and closed, not once, but twice before he finally said, "No...not always."

A smile curled her lips and Shepard said, "If this is the end for us all, I think I'd rather go knowing we did all we could and didn't sell our souls to do it."

Suddenly, he felt weak at the knees and propped his body up on the edge of the basin with his arms. Such simple logic, how had it eluded him in the past?

Shepard idly dipped her fingers in the water and made ripples, then made more ripples in another part of the pool. He watched them collide, wondering if it was some symbol of something greater. Some wisdom she was trying to impart to him. Or else, she just played with the water. From the amused smile on her face, it could very well be the latter.

She startled him by leaning on him, shoulder to shoulder. He looked down at her round, hair covered head with surprise. This close, he could feel her worry, and her pride in all of them. The whole galaxy uniting for this purpose.

He also felt her acceptance that should things go awry, they'd remain blameless. The onus would be on her and her alone. And alone she did feel, riding atop of this wave that drove them all towards fate.

Javik shook his head, whispering, "You are not alone."

"Careful, or Liara will think you're flirting with me." She teased, leaning away from him with a laugh.

He frowned, "What does the asari have to do with anything?"

Shepard laughed again, "Four eyes and you can't see what's right in front of your face."

"I do not like to be mocked, human."

"The _universe_ is mocking us, prothean. Can't you hear it?" She clapped once and strode towards the door, "Let us hope that at the end of the day, we'll be laughing, too."

She paused at the portal and turned back to him, saying in a serious tone, "Javik, you're not alone either."

As he watched her leave, he thought how strange to take comfort from a primitive's words. And he_ was_ comforted. His inner turmoil; abated for now. He felt cleaner somehow. Maybe it was her words or the tears he'd wept, but he felt lighter than he'd felt in a long, long time.

Maybe hope wasn't as dead as he thought.


End file.
